SOUNDS TOO good to be true, doesn’t it?

The job of an MP has always smacked of “nice work if you can get it” thanks to the generous salary and all those parliamentary perks.

I appreciate that some politicians work incredibly hard but as Sir Malcolm Rifkind proved last week, there are others with so much free time they can barely remember who is paying their wages.

The Tory grandee was rightly forced to resign after claiming “no one pays me a salary” despite earning more than £67,000 a year from the taxpayer as MP of the cushy Conservative seat of Kensington in London.

If ever you needed proof of politicians being totally out of touch with the general public, then Rifkind is it

If it wasn’t bad enough that Rifkind boasted of having so much free time he “reads” and “takes walks”, he then hammered a final nail in the coffin of his 40-year political career by claiming that £67,060 wasn’t a lot of money to most professional people. Eh?

If ever you needed proof of politicians being totally out of touch with the general public, then Rifkind is it.

There is a further sting in the tail of this sorry story.

Did you know MPs are due to give themselves a whopping 11 per cent pay rise after the next election?

Regardless of who wins or loses, the politicians in Commons will earn £74,000 after May 7, an increase of nearly £7,000.

With salaries largely frozen across the private sector and public sector increases capped at one per cent, that rather takes the biscuit, doesn’t it?

Despite all their protestations, MPs have done nothing to stop it, but to paraphrase Mandy Rice Davies: they wouldn’t, would they?

The Prime Minister threatened to abolish Ipsa if it did not “think again” but guess what? Nothing’s happened.

I cannot think of a better election pledge for any of the main parties than scrapping this breathtakingly brazen salary increase and spending it on something more worthy, like the electorate.

Remember us, MPs? We live in the real world where the average salary is £26,500 and where things like five-day working weeks get in the way of burying our heads in books, long strolls and moonlighting.

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GETTY

Madonna took a tumble on-stage at the BRITs - but carried on performing like the superstar she is

THERE cannot be a woman in showbusiness more resilient than Madonna.

There she was, strutting her stuff on the Brits stage last week when a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction caused her to be dragged backwards down a staircase.

There were gasps from the audience, most of whom were half her age, as the 56-year-old singer came a cropper (or as Twitter put it: #MadgeDown).

Being the Queen of Pop, she of course kept calm and carried on like a trooper.

Well, what else would you expect of a woman who has managed to sustain a 40-year music career despite not making a decent album since Like A Virgin?

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GETTY

Louis van Gaal and Scarlett Johansson sporting the same hairstyle

HAS SCARLETT Johansson been taking style tips from Louis van Gaal?

The Hollywood A-lister appeared to have been inspired by the Manchester United manager by sporting a short back and sides to the Oscars last week.

He’s Dutch. She sounds like she should be.

Maybe they’re distant relatives.

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GETTY

What better way to socialise a nervous child than to have her start school earlier?

AS THE mother of not one but two summer-born children, I do not agree with delaying their schooling for a year.

Mother Rosie Dutton, 30, is campaigning for her August-born four-year-old Olivia to start school a year later so she would be the eldest in her reception class instead of the youngest.

Mrs Dutton said: “I felt Olivia was not emotionally ready to start school just weeks after turning four. She’s quite sensitive and takes a long time to get used to people.”

What better way to socialise her daughter than put her in a class of her peers?

All children develop at different rates, regardless of when they are born in the academic year.

The Department for Education is constantly releasing scare statistics suggesting that summer babies are “twice as likely” to get bad grades as autumn ones – but the reality is children will do well at school if they have good teachers and supportive parents.

Barack Obama, Neil Armstrong, Roger Federer, Bill Clinton, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Usain Bolt, Warren Buffet, Madonna – they were all born in August and they all landed on their feet (well, almost all).

Olivia could have happily started school with the dispensation that she was one of the youngest in the class but instead she has missed a year of her education.

This strikes me as yet another example of middle-class parents wrapping up their children in cotton wool instead of just letting them get on with it.